In what ought to be a really great read and impetus for great debate and discussion, Chad Finn is launching this series today over at Boston.com. He'll be profiling them in five groups of 10 each.
This morning, he introduces the project with this piece, where he lays down his evaluation guidelines and sources, and presents a cavalcade of prospects who didn't crack his list.
Really looking forward to this.
Among those missing the cut:
This morning, he introduces the project with this piece, where he lays down his evaluation guidelines and sources, and presents a cavalcade of prospects who didn't crack his list.
Really looking forward to this.
There were many great joys in pulling together this project, which I began working on during any downtime of more than moment or two pretty much after I devoured this initial piece of ah-ha inspiration: David Schoenfield's terrific 2011 piece for ESPN on the 50 best prospects of the draft era.
But there was no greater joy than digging through the Boston Globe archives -- especially the treasure trove of photos and clips still to be found in the ancient subterranean library at the far end of the newsroom -- to find insightful early references to players who were in consideration for this list.
The byline on these stories, even as seasons turned to decades and one-time prospects became big-league veterans if they were so fortunate -- was the name Peter Gammons, and perhaps even more often than you would imagine. A debt of gratitude is owed to him from this address, not just for inspiring me with my dad and the daily newspaper as the conduits, but for what he and how wrote.
In sorting out the rankings of our 50, of deciding between, say, Bruce Hurst and Jon Lester, or Butch Hobson and Ted Cox, I kept the process simple, like Schoenfield did for his list four years ago. I tried to imagine how prospects from the days before the Internet and Baseball America would be perceived today with all of the information and resources we now have.
How good they became is a small part of the consideration. How good they seemed like they might become is a bigger part. Tools mattered, of course. So did production, but the variables of league and age were factored in. Strikeout-to-walk ratio played a huge role in judging young pitchers. On-base percentage, not always valued in the see-the-ball, hit-the-ball '70s, was a strong consideration for evaluating batters. There's no doubt that Wade Boggs, he of the .335/.437/.460 slash line for the 1981 PawSox, would be far better appreciated during his ascent nowadays.
Strength of the organization at the time some prospects were evaluated also mattered. A No. 1-rated prospect such as Seung Song from the Dan Duquette Era of Farm System Neglect did not come close to making this list.
Among those missing the cut:
Former No. 1-ranked Red Sox prospects according to Baseball America's annual ratings: Lars Anderson (2009), Dernell Stenson (rest in peace -- I really tried to include him), Donnie Sadler (ranked ahead of Nomar in 1996), Andy Marte (2006), Seung Song (2002), Steve Lomasney (2000), Daisuke Matsuzaka (2007, shouldn't have been called a prospect based on his success as professional in Japan), Will Middlebrooks (2012), and Jose Iglesias (2011).